I'd actually be interested in knowing more about those things. My parents picked up something that looks a lot like those at a yard sale many years ago. Little wood shield with a small flail attached. I think it's still in their basement somewhere.

After being arrested for drug smuggling, the defendant was released after his attorney proved that the second hand smoke from the arresting officer's pipe lowered his lifespan the same number of years for which he had been sentenced.

Our laws governing marijuana are a mixture of bad science and poor understanding of the role of law as a deterrent force. They are unenforceable, excessively severe, scientifically incorrect and revealing of our ignorance of human behavior. The federal and state laws should be revised to reflect the fact that marijuana is a hallucinogen and should be classified as such. The federal statutes should be repealed ...

Oh how far we've come. No, not really. That pretty much sums up how we make every decision.

Mace: a weapon with a heavy head on a solid shaft.Flail: A weapon with a heavy head connected to a shaft by a chain.Morning star: A weapon with a head that is covered in one or more spikes connected to a shaft.

I prefer a good mace personal. Just crush whatever you hit.

Using a real combat based flail without armour is a good way to seriously hurt or kill yourself. Of course there is also the safer to use agricultural flail that been adopted on many battlefields as an improvised weapon too. Surprisingly it used to flail crops. Who have thought that?

Scoth:I'd actually be interested in knowing more about those things. My parents picked up something that looks a lot like those at a yard sale many years ago. Little wood shield with a small flail attached. I think it's still in their basement somewhere.

Yeah, those look like cheesy wall decorations. Guy was probably an interior decorator as well as a drug smuggler.

stevetherobot:Scoth: I'd actually be interested in knowing more about those things. My parents picked up something that looks a lot like those at a yard sale many years ago. Little wood shield with a small flail attached. I think it's still in their basement somewhere.

Yeah, those look like cheesy wall decorations. Guy was probably an interior decorator as well as a drug smuggler.

mytdawg:Our laws governing marijuana are a mixture of bad science and poor understanding of the role of law as a deterrent force. They are unenforceable, excessively severe, scientifically incorrect and revealing of our ignorance of human behavior. The federal and state laws should be revised to reflect the fact that marijuana is a hallucinogen and should be classified as such. The federal statutes should be repealed ...

Oh how far we've come. No, not really. That pretty much sums up how we make every decision.

Since when did science ever have anything to do with the law? Laws are used to enforce a culture. It's not done out of ignorance, it's natural for the dominate culture to exert it's values. Those values are not arrived at haphazardly. They are the tenants that are successful for the members of that culture. If they were not, they would not be valued and enforced. However the culture that wrote those laws, while still in power, has been loosening its grip on some issues like marijuana because it's seeing an opportunity to raise revenue on one hand and save on the cost of enforcement on the other. Also weed just isn't as stigmatized as it once was in this country. The culture is realizing that prohibition is difficult to enforce in a democracy.

Scoth:I'd actually be interested in knowing more about those things. My parents picked up something that looks a lot like those at a yard sale many years ago. Little wood shield with a small flail attached. I think it's still in their basement somewhere.

Wall mounts. If you look at the picture closely, each also has two crossed swords. Less clear to me are what those things at the far right are. Possibly little statues on their sides (their flat bases towards the left), holding spears parallel to themselves.

mytdawg:Our laws governing marijuana are a mixture of bad science and poor understanding of the role of law as a deterrent force. They are unenforceable, excessively severe, scientifically incorrect and revealing of our ignorance of human behavior. The federal and state laws should be revised to reflect the fact that marijuana is a hallucinogen and should be classified as such. The federal statutes should be repealed ...

Oh how far we've come. No, not really. That pretty much sums up how we make every decision.

All that effort to keep out what was at the time acknowledged by the majority of Americans as a harmful drug with no particular value and the Congress and your President wanted banned.

Flash forward to 2013. Democrats in the Senate and your President want to get rid of a product that Americans are sharply divided upon and but has value to millions of them and some see as a Constitutional right, not just as a recreational activity.

We lost the "War of Drugs", particularly weed, badly even though billions continue to be spent on enforcement. Demand only increased over time and its probably cheaper, when adjusted for inflation, than ever before and more potent. Many of those who insisted on the billions spent talked in terms of "if it saves just one life..." Yet not nearly as many billions get spent on rehabilitation and reducing demand through screening for addictive behavior.

"We have to do something" or "if it saves just one life" is not a good reason to cost us further billions for nothing, ruining lives and ruining families for nothing, and further driving wedges into a nation that is already critically divided over the most basic issues. For what? Some photo ops of cops in stormtrooper gear standing around a case of semiautomatic rifles? Whatever "war of guns" Barry and his crew have planned, it's time stop it before it starts and we make yet another tragic mistake. If you must spend the money, spend it on mental health care, better security for schools and such. Treat the CAUSE this time, not the symptom.

I was in Mexico City and Oaxaca in 67 they had notes at the border crossings to scare you with one seed busts etc. When I was a senior in HS weed was usually 200 $ a pound and 20$ for a lid . at least that is what I sold it for.

cakeman:I was in Mexico City and Oaxaca in 67 they had notes at the border crossings to scare you with one seed busts etc. When I was a senior in HS weed was usually 200 $ a pound and 20$ for a lid . at least that is what I sold it for.

Billy Bathsalt:So there used to be marijuana before it was eliminated by the war on drugs in 1969? Who knew?

Reagan's War on Drugs (TM) caused a shift from the innocuous pot to dangerous cocaine as the nation's drug of choice. Pot is bulky and easily detected. An amount of cocaine that will fetch the same amount of money as a plane-load of pot can be transported in a brief case, so smugglers switched products and gave rise to the cocaine cartels. The price of pot skyrocketed and the price of cocaine plummeted. After years of decline, heroine use began to rise again. The war on drugs may have made political hay, but by every measure, it has been an abysmal waste of time, money and effort and contributed to some very serious drug problems.

There were a half a million people on the lawnAnd we sang to the faces in the darkHow long must that damn raceWait for the jailer's time to end?How long must the Panther raceWait for the iron bars to bend?And no no no no no nobody waits

isildurWall mounts. If you look at the picture closely, each also has two crossed swords. Less clear to me are what those things at the far right are. Possibly little statues on their sides (their flat bases towards the left), holding spears parallel to themselves.

Just typical kitschy tourist crap,those are stylized suits of armor,they're still sold in the border towns.Same with the flails/maces/morningstars,they're made of really cheap pot metal.

MythDragon:If you are gonna flail someone, do it with style[www.ibiblio.org image 640x471]/I couldn't imagine the pants shiatting that happened the first time a German soldier saw that motherfarker coming his way.

Considering the state of the tank war, I'd have to wonder exactly who's pants were being shiat.

/On the subject of the drug war: Since its been about as bad an idea as prohibition I wonder how long till everyone realizes it can only end like prohibition did./We may be a few decades overdue for legalization, but we're due.

MythDragon:If you are gonna flail someone, do it with style[www.ibiblio.org image 640x471]/I couldn't imagine the pants shiatting that happened the first time a German soldier saw that motherfarker coming his way.

That is an anti mine device, not an anti personnel device. (of course, that doesn't stop it being used as an anti personnel device)